Mexico’s Emerging Sound With lo-fi laptop compositions constructed from cheap synths, jacked beats, and inflected with the regional rhythms of the Americas, Mexico’s hip, digitally savvy twenty-somethings have created a ‘new tendency’ in digital music that has the caught the ear of influential music blogs, causing the rest of the world to take […]

Mexico’s Emerging Sound

With lo-fi laptop compositions constructed from cheap synths, jacked beats, and inflected with the regional rhythms of the Americas, Mexico’s hip, digitally savvy twenty-somethings have created a ‘new tendency’ in digital music that has the caught the ear of influential music blogs, causing the rest of the world to take notice.

While Tijuana is home to some of the most exciting new music being produced, there is little audience for cutting edge local bands on an upward arc. This is Tijuana’s paradox – a city home to an avant guarde music scene that goes unnoticed locally, but has the rest of the globe buzzing. Recently, the city recently played host to Guacamole Fest, a two day music festival showcasing bands from both Tijuana, and around Mexico, at the forefront of this scene. [With Colombia/Canada’s Lido Pimienta as a special guest]

Undoubtably, it was the most exciting musical event this city has seen in at least a year. The festival, however, was met with little fanfare in Tijuana, as neither the hometown talent nor the blogosphere’s darlings from elsewhere playing Tijuana for the first time were enough to get more than 40 people to come out. Mid-decade Brooklyn-centric indy and dated Euro-electro still hold sway here and it has proven difficult for Tijuana’s best new acts to emerge from the shadows of Nortec’s fading relevance.

Mexico’s subcultural musical stirrings have created an ascendant new sound and with it, a new scene. Guacamole Fest was its defining moment. Something is happening here, and the rest of the world is starting to pay attention.